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Feb 6, 2019

France condemns Italy's meeting with gilets jaunes leader

Paris says deputy PM Luigi Di Maio’s actions are an unacceptable provocation
Luigi Di Maio, the Italian deputy prime minister and leader of the
anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), has met a senior figure
from the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement – a meeting slammed as an
unacceptable provocation by the French foreign ministry.

Di Maio and Alessandro Di Battista, a prominent M5S member, met
Christophe Chalençon, as well as candidates the protest movement has put
forward for the European elections in May, on the outskirts of Paris on
Tuesday. Posting a photo of the group on Facebook, Di Maio described it
as a “beautiful” meeting.

“The wind of change has crossed the Alps. I repeat. The wind of change has crossed the Alps,” he wrote.

“This new provocation is not acceptable between neighbouring countries
and partners in the European Union,” a French foreign ministry spokesman
responded in a daily online briefing.

“Mr Di Maio, who holds government responsibilities, must take care not
to undermine, through his repeated interferences, our bilateral
relations, in the interest of both France and Italy.”

Di Maio had previously expressed his admiration for the gilets jaunes,
who have been holding at times violent anti-government protests each
week across France for the past few months. He urged the movement not to
“give up” and said the demonstrations reminded him of the spirit that
gave birth to the M5S in 2009.

On Tuesday he said the two groups shared “many common positions and
values that focus on the battles for citizens, social rights, direct
democracy and the environment”.

Chalençon said while both sides “practically agree on everything”, there
was no talk yet about whether they would form an alliance for the
elections to the European parliament. Italian media reported that Ingrid
Levavasseur, who heads the gilets jaunes’ list of 10 candidates for the
elections, would meet M5S officials again in Rome next week.

The meeting follows a series of verbal attacks from Di Maio and his
co-deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, on the French president,
Emmanuel Macron, in recent weeks and is also seen as an additional
tactic by M5S to regain some of the popularity lost to Salvini’s
far-right League since the coalition government came to power last June.

“M5S is weak right now,” said Massimiliano Panarari, a politics
professor at Luiss University in Rome. “They are losing traction in
their traditionally antagonistic contingencies and they need to find
every antagonistic issue to demonstrate that they are strong. Macron is
also the perfect target for populist movements.”

Panarari said the meeting with the gilets jaunes was also a way to tell
Italian voters that M5S still had its “anti-establishment soul”, as well
as to attract similar groups with whom they might be able to build a
coalition after the EU elections.

M5S launched its European election campaign in January, with Di Maio and
Di Battista travelling to the European parliament in Strasbourg and
denouncing the institution as a “waste of money”. At the time, Di Maio
said he was preparing an election manifesto with other European populist
groups.

Opinion polls in France have suggested that the main impact of one or
more gilets jaunes candidates standing in the European elections would
be to reduce support for the far-right party of Marine Le Pen and the
far left, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

A survey last month by Elabé showed 13% of voters could vote for a
gilets jaunes party, knocking three points off the score of Le Pen’s
National Rally and 1.5 off that of Mélenchon’s France Unbowed, and
extending the lead of Macron’s La République En Marche (LREM).

“A gilets jaunes party would likely mobilise people who do not usually
vote, but also take votes from the National Rally and France Unbowed,”
Emmanuel Rivière of he pollsters Kantar Public France told Le Monde.
“Paradoxically, the principal beneficiary would be the party of the
president.”

An Ifop opinion poll published on Wednesday showed Macron’s approval rating surging from 23% in December to 34% in February.